While I was driving from Pearson Airport to Niagara Falls for a district retreat, I was listening to a podcast called Net@Nite that is hosted by Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur. Amber mentioning adding Facebook Connect to her comments on her website, and Leo found out that Facebook Connect was also integrated into Disqus.
Now, all of that might mean nothing to some of you. In simple terms, you can use your Facebook login to post comments. This allows for the comments section to be more of a discussion community rather than simply a place to agree or disagree with my posts.
Also, with the format Disqus has, you can reply directly to someone’s comment and have a discussion with that person. You aren’t tied to simply discuss the blog post! Freedom!
One of my main goals with this blog is to have discussions about the mutual influence of children’s ministry and culture as well as where children’s ministry needs to go in the 21st century. I am hoping the changes in the comments section will facilitate more conversations as we continue to figure out how to best create culture as we minister to kids and their families.
So, c’mon and try leaving a comment using your Facebook login!!! Let me know how you like the new comments setup. Do even care?
Testing the comments with Facebook.
Posted by Steve Tanner | January 14, 2009, 12:13 pmThanks for checking the site out and testing the video comment. I was impressed at how well the widget worked out, too.
Posted by henryjz | January 14, 2009, 6:20 pmLooks great! What platform did you use for your site and comments? I'm in the process of setting a blog up and would love to use this type of comments with Facebook and Disqus integrated within it.
Posted by Jorin Cowley | January 14, 2009, 6:37 pmThanks for checking out the blog. I use WordPress for my blog. I edited the Dilectio theme from Design Disease. You then upload the Disqus plugin for your comments and follow the directions on their site on how to install and activate it.
Posted by henryjz | January 14, 2009, 7:42 pmgiannii@disqus.com
Posted by giannii | January 14, 2009, 4:45 pmHa! You're a tech podcast listener too, huh? When I first started listening to podcasts (about 3 years ago) I listened to another show hosted by Leo and Amber… I really liked it, but I can't remember what it was called. Now I listen to Buzz Out Loud for most of my tech news.Testing out the FB connect, pretty cool stuff.
Posted by Kenny Conley | January 18, 2009, 3:01 amThe video comments are neat. I think they use Seesmic to power it.
Posted by joshaidan | January 19, 2009, 8:05 pmHey Henry, I just set this up on two of the websites I manage. Question for you. Does it update the Facebook news stories when they post on your site? If so, how did you get that to work?
Posted by Tony Mazon | January 23, 2009, 2:50 amI'm not sure. I haven't really checked up on that. I would imagine all of that has to do with the setting when you create the FB App to go along with FB Connect.
Posted by henryjz | January 23, 2009, 3:24 pmHey thanks for this. It's nice to know this kind of stuff!
Posted by Spiritual Information | January 28, 2009, 7:22 pm